CHARLIE CHAPLIN HAUNTS THE WORLD!

Once a year, on All Hallows' Eve, the ghost of Charlie Chaplin rises from the earth and wanders the Hollywood landscape, searching desperately for the latest salacious rumors flowing through the streets, the cafes, the parking lots, the film palaces, the newsrooms, the thirsty veins of the movie capital of the world. He shuffles from one unfamiliar location to another, swinging his bamboo cane in the autumn twilight, trying to reconnect with his own distant past, to somehow recapture the glories of the Golden Age of Cinema. This year, near a lonely bench in an empty city park, he stumbles across a most unusual tome, Robert Guffey's HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CINEMA OF OCCULTED TABOOS, which contains revelations about the shadow side of Tinsel Town that shock even him. These improbable disclosures jump-start his long-dead brain waves, almost startling him into physical form once again... but, alas, not quite. At the stroke of midnight, as October 31st fades into Dia de los Muertos, the phantom of the Little Tramp once again collapses into its insubstantial form, doomed to waddle back to the misty limbo from whence it came. At least for a little while. Until next year. Until the barrier between the worlds becomes ever so thin again. And in the meantime, the Little Tramp has been allowed to bring back some engaging reading material. For this, at least, he is eternally grateful. In his final moments on Earth in the year 2026, he shouts out the following speech: "Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD by Robert Guffey! Without these, life will be violent and all will be lost!" And then he flickers into nonexistence, drifting away to the Other Side once more...